On Friday, the Seasteading Institute—a non-profit group cofounded by Peter Thiel and Patri Friedman …
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The plan (which would of course require federal affirmation even if Californians approved) is to subdivide the existing state into six smaller, new states: Jefferson, North California, Central California, West California, South California, and, of course, Silicon Valley, which would receive its own state government and elected officials in our federal legislature. The Sean Parkers and Peter Thiels of our nation would finally get their enclave, an anti-regulatory Xanadu comprised not of noble yeoman, toilers, artists, or thinkers, but app-hucksters and Tesla-driving engineers. Not content with squeezing tax breaks out of San Francisco, Draper's new state could be a haven for everything tech—a territory dedicated to an industry. The state song? This. The state bird? A homeless person with wings, flying far, far away from San Francisco, now a state capital.

If you're a startup that's taken investment money from First Round Capital, I'm not…
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TechCrunch points out that "getting such a measure on California's wacky ballot will be no easy task," as "attempts to get initiatives on the state ballot can cost millions of dollars, and often fail." Though it's a longshot, Draper absolutely has any requisite millions. He also has the fierce anti-government guts to push forward with something this insane—it's the same man who has decried Washington as a "cancer" in America, and urged its relocation.

Tim Draper, the name-dropping venture capitalist who funded Hotmail and Skype, met a bunch of…
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It also makes a lot of stupid sense. Time and time again, Silicon Valley espouses, almost theatrically performs its disdain for the rest of the cosmos. There are the Hackers, the Makers, the Change the World-ers—and then there are the rest of us. There are the homeless, and there are the condo-dwelling. There are the people in the Twitter cafeteria, and then there's everyone else beneath it. Techies will go to greath lengths to insulate themselves from anyone else they don't consider insturmental to their hacker heaven on earth—whether that means holing up in a luxury commune, or absconding to a mountaintop. Californians who aren't actively contributing to the software GDP will be out on their own—not our problem anymore, farm boys!

A series of events: the New York Times writes about how insulated Twitter is from its destitute…
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It's safe to assume that California will not, for all Draper and his money's efforts, be split six ways. But tech's general will to divide, to retreat, to hole up with all the other jerks and build a billion new ways to have your dry cleaning picked up via iPhone—needs no vote, and is already strongly ratified.